Conscience-keepers of their communities

CHENNAI: They might be reading under street lamps or resting along the pavements as vehicles honk away. But these children who live on street pavements, now have a platform to voice their choices and points of view, thanks to the efforts of the Pavement Dwellers Rights Association and Karunalaya, an NGO which now has a formalised structure of children’s clubs. Child leaders who were recently elected to the office of the Central Children Leader Council, the highest body of children’s clubs comprising pavement children, shared their hopes for their communities even as they geared up to take oath.Sillabarasan (16) from Kannappa Thidal pavement, a class XI student who was elected president of the Central Children Leader Council said, “This is one of the very democratically fought elections in which we had to file nominations. We were assigned symbols after which we campaigned and got voted to office by the children of our communities.”Sillabarasan, who was elected under the strawberry symbol, plans to work towards keeping every child on the pavement in school and away from work. He said, “It is very easy for children of the pavement dwellers to drop out of school and join the labour force. Keeping them in school is going to be a tough challenge.” He added, “Once we assume office, we plan to collect data of the number of children who are not going to school and who are involved in child labour. We will motivate those kids and their parents to send them back to school. And then, we plan to go to the school authorities and talk to them to take these kids back in the system. The only way to keep them away from child labour is by keeping them in schools.”There are about six such children’s clubs in North Chennai that comprise 180 child members from pavement dwelling communities. Every club has four departments which deals with four major areas like Education, Social, Sports and Cultural. Once in a month, they have a planning meeting, and every Friday, the clubs have some activity-based events. Every club has eight representatives. Once in every three months, all the clubs have a combined meeting as they share notes on their success, failures, plans and strategies. Every week, each member contributes `2 as membership subscription, which is used to buy prizes for the winners of the various events periodically conducted by these clubs.Durga Devi from Barracks Road Pavement, who is studying in Class 9 and is the vice president elect, talked about a pressing issue her community is facing -- the dwindling space on pavements.She said, “The space on the pavement in which we live is decreasing every day because of the increase in the number of permanently parked vehicles. Once we take our oaths, we plan to address the issue by talking to people who live in the street and also to those who own shops to see that, they do not park vehicles permanently.  This forces us to sleep literally on the road, which puts us at risk.”The other two members of the Central Children Leaders Council are Karthick, Treasurer elect and Sandhya, who is the Secretary.  Both are in Classes 9 and 7 respectively.Paul Sundersingh, Secretary of Karunalaya, said, “The children clubs not only provide a platform for the children to be agents of change, they are also being the conscience-keepers of their communities.”Saying that, Sundersingh recalled an event that happened a year ago.“The children from a Periamedu Children’s club filed a police petition against their parents who were addicted to gambling.”As these children get ready to assume office next week, their peers have high hopes.